Sai Chintalapati, 10, a student at the Calhoun Care Career Center and Lakeview Middle School, works in a computer networking class at the Career Center.

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The Enquirer

Sai Chintalapati, 10, may be the youngest person ever certified by CompTIA to perform hardware and software repairs on personal computers.

He was 9 when he earned the certification, a fourth-grader so far ahead of his classmates he was learning alongside people twice his age at the Calhoun Area Career Center. His computer networking instructor there, Paul Fedele, said Chintalapati’s parents reached out the Guinness Book of World Records, where an official told them the book doesn’t track certifications. Fedele himself reached out to CompTIA, where officials told him they couldn’t release information on other students because of federal privacy laws.

But, so far as the school and parents’ independent research can tell, Chintalapati’s got the next-youngest certified repairman beat by two years.

In addition to supportive parents and his own unique gifts, Chintalapati said “the schools here are really awesome,” helping him find ways to further his education. The young technician’s experience is an extreme example of the opportunity that abounds for local students who want to connect to the jobs of tomorrow.

For the academics, schools across the area funnel students into the Battle Creek Area Math & Science Center, which can funnel students direct to university or through Kellogg Community College for jobs back here in the burgeoning food science industry downtown or a strong local health sector.

For the trade skills-minded, area schools funnel students into the CACC, which can direct students through KCC’s Regional Manufacturing Technology Center and directly to a growing and increasingly advanced manufacturing sector in the Fort Custer Industrial Park on the west side of town.

Through a growing focus on career and college readiness and more partnerships with local companies and colleges, local high schools are trying to offer more opportunities even to students who choose not to go to the Math & Science Center or CACC.

But Chintalapati said it wasn’t schools alone that earned him that certification.

“You have to work hard and do lots of stuff outside of school,” the boy said last month at the CACC. “You have to study a lot.”

For all the local opportunity for students and employees to arm themselves with technical skills, employers — especially in manufacturing and skilled trade fields — often complain about a lack of soft skills, local educators said: basic math and reading skills, critical thinking skills and the ability to solve problems, the know-how to show up on time, the ability to pass a drug test, an understanding of quality and safety, and a willingness to put in entry-level work to advance in a company.

Local jobs by the hundreds go unfilled because of that disconnect, local officials said.

“Our biggest challenge is getting the people who want to do that work,” said Laura McGuire, director of KCC’s RMTC.

Part of that is two decades or more of messages in the media and schools that gone are the days one could start on the bottom rung of a factory floor and work your way up. But McGuire said, for those willing to do the work, it’s still possible to start at the bottom and grow in a factory, many of them even offering tuition reimbursement.

“The companies will train from within to get what they need,” McGuire said. “So the best place to be is within … It’s one of the only jobs out there you can say to your boss, ‘I want to be a technician; I want to be an engineer; I want to eventually work in finance.’”

As well, “part of it is stigma and part of it is the Michigan Merit Curriculum,” said Lakeview School District Superintendent Dave Peterson.

Over the years, the state’s mandated more academic rigor and, critics say, offered little flexibility in requiring classes that seemed to push kids toward four-year college degrees and away from learning a trade. Students who struggle on that academic route can become discouraged and give up entirely.

That’s “created a real void we’ve got to fill quickly,” Peterson said. “The kids have more skills than people know, but they’re just not motivated to go that route.”

But McGuire said “manufacturing training doesn’t need to take away from the curriculum (schools) need to teach. What manufacturing can do is add to it.”

She said the local Workforce Development Board has started a program to get core-curriculum teachers — math, reading and writing, science and social studies — onto factory floors and into other businesses so they can have a better understanding of what’s needed in the workforce. That might lead a teacher, for example, to stop using cannon balls and medieval catapults to teach physics and start using more real-world lessons.

It’s been a challenge because “the job market and the jobs out there change so quickly, and let’s be honest, education doesn’t change as quickly as the job market does,” said Coby Fletcher, principal at Battle Creek Central High School.

The key, Fletcher said, is for schools to push hard on skills that are needed everywhere. So he said Central stresses literacy and does a lot with critical thinking, asking kids to write argumentative papers and do research to support their positions, for example.

The other thing, he said, is to give as much opportunity for students to experience different things as they possibly can, including job shadows and other partnerships with local companies.

“In the end, as a principal, what I hope we do as a school is light their fire for something,” Fletcher said. He said students interested in what they’re doing are more likely to show up on time, stay off drugs and be willing to learn.

One of the ways schools light fires is by keeping a finger on the pulse of industry so kids can see how their skills will be used, said Kris Jenkins, director of career technical education for the Calhoun Intermediate School District, which runs the CACC.

At the CACC, for example, their instructors are current or former practitioners in whatever field they teach, and they regularly receive training to stay current on the latest trends in the industry. Jenkins said 35 local educators breakfasted at Denso Manufacturing Michigan last month, for example, to see what the needs were there.

Eileen Conor, a work-based learning teacher coordinator at the CISD, said school counselors at the CACC also know what’s out there as well and spend time with every student.

“Just to let them dream and then say, ‘Let’s put a plan to that dream,’ ” Conor said.

While students might get discouraged, it’s never too late to train, even in rigorous fields like health or food science, said Carole Davis, chairwoman of the math and science department at KCC.

“One semester I had a student who said, ‘I didn’t know I was a science geek, but I really am. I’m a science geek,’” Davis said. “We’ve had many, many students who didn’t think they were interested in math and science or could do it and did well after starting the program.”

But in a still-sluggish and uncertain economy, McGuire said many people remain apprehensive about investing their time in getting the needed skills. People are “insecure; they don’t want to do the work if the jobs are going to go away again,” she said.

As for whether the growing local food science industry and 800 new jobs announced at the Fort Custer complex are signs those fears are unwarranted, McGuire smiled.